Book Description

Ray Bradbury, during the 2008 Holiday season, sent a fan letter to John T. Cullen, praising The Christmas Clock: "Bravo, John! Read & Loved your 'Clock."On a darker, more universal level, The Christmas Clock is an allegory of how alcoholism reaches across generations and destroys families through violence and cruelty--but the human spirit can redeem itself, not by erasing or discarding the past (which makes us who we are) but by fixing the past within ourselves, and by rediscovering ourselves and the loves in our life.Arthur Latchloose had it all-a beautiful wife, wonderful children, wealth-and somehow it all disappeared from his life, leaving him a lonely and grumpy old man. As Christmas Eve descends upon the shadowy, neon city, and a blizzard coats the landscape with its silent magic, Arthur sits alone in his bank, the Latchloose Building of course. He putters around his priceless antique collection, only dimly aware that there is much more to life than his glittering treasures.The phone rings. It's Major Jarlid, fresh from the Middle East wars. Jarlid is desperate, and must sell a fabulous old Ottoman clock with magical properties. Not only that, but a djinni comes with the clock, and a single life-altering wish. This isn't your grandma's djinni. He's a harried young fellow, under a lot of stress, always on the phone with the home office in London. But he doesn't have a clue how mean and hard a bargain old skinflint Latchloose can drive.The djinni gives Arthur a choice: either wipe out your previous life, including those you loved, and get a whole new life-or go back and fix what you broke. Seeing his son and daughter, and then his beloved, deceased wife Gretchen, Arthur begins to see his many regretchens.Not only that, but the djinni gives Arthur a unique tour of his past life, in the form of a river of time resembling a darkling Niagara of sand-the sands of time. Embedded in these sands are artifacts from the past-and memories so terrible Arthur can barely look. But look he must, and deal with them, in a catharsis that brings him to his one and only great decision: to go back and fix, and reclaim what is lost, or to forget and move on. As Arthur and the djinni wander through the city on this quest, the hours strike, one terrible tolling after another among the snowy streets and concrete canyons lit by neon. As the harried djinni runs along, Arthur drives his bargain to the very last stroke of the very last hour, gambling with the very fabric of time and reality...The Christmas Clock is a treasure of wisdom, a play of morality, a shining gem of dark fantasy to warm your Holiday night. Like Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, it brings out the best and the worst in people, and gives you chills and goosebumps as Arthur Latchloose finally comes up against a Fate he cannot escape or deny. The payoff is either total catastrophe forever, or a warm and shining Holiday reward.